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The ideal financial ecosystem

According to Equinix’s Vice President and Global Head of Ecosystems, John Knuff, mobile networks, financial institutions, e-commerce sites and fraud prevention companies are cooperating on a whole new scale like never before.

Besides collaborating to offer more choice in terms of digital services to consumers, another requirement is further fuelling partnerships amongst these electronic payments (e-payment) players – security and fraud prevention.

The emergence of non-traditional and new players, inconsistent regulations, and multiple stakeholders, highlight security concerns that urgently need to be addressed. But, despite rapid progression in the payments space, stronger authentication methods and improved fraud detection remains as key issues across markets.

John Knuff

Knuff opined, “An interconnected ecosystem of companies with specialised capabilities is an important step forward and will help to provide a strong line of defense as mobile payment platforms gain momentum.”

The ideal financial ecosystem

Humongous amounts of data is generated every second, in the financial industry. Data generated from interchange fees, transaction fees, merchant discounts opens doors to limitless potential in areas such as real-time fraud detection, intelligent payments and lower transaction costs, according to Knuff.

“There are millions of transactions taking place each second and resultant transactional data gives companies valuable insights to end-user habits such as transaction locations, durations, and so on.”

He also opined that the ideal financial ecosystem should be built on an interconnected network, which provides enterprises, financial institutions and data analytics companies the support they need through direct connections to their partners. The foundation of a strong network is vital, as it greatly reduces latency, simplifies deployment of applications and controls bandwidth costs.

The long-term opportunity is in data and companies are leveraging the power of data to develop intelligent payment applications that speak to the individual’s needs and increase efficiencies.

For example, intelligent payments enable companies to programme applications such as bill payment reminders, security time-outs, and more to provide users with the most efficient payment experience.